


Rocinante

by Goldmonger



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 2020 Supernatural Shutdown Bingo, Brother Feels, Fluff, Gen, Humor, Hurt Sam Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, Manhandling, Protective Dean Winchester, Slice of Life, brothers being brothers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-14
Updated: 2020-04-14
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:42:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23642542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Goldmonger/pseuds/Goldmonger
Summary: Dean does his brotherly duty, even if it makes the kids giggle. Sam, meanwhile, tries to remember what dignity feels like.
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 13
Kudos: 102





	Rocinante

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [2020 Supernatural Shutdown Bingo!](https://2020-supernatural-shutdown-bingo.tumblr.com/)
> 
> *

“I mean seriously, _zombie bears?”_

It’s shouted into the sky over the outcropping of rocks, startling a nearby cluster of crows into sudden flight. Twenty feet below the cliff edge and thoroughly out of the range of his brother’s fury, Sam can’t help but wince anyway.

“They were revenant familiars,” he calls up half-heartedly, expecting a sarcastic riposte, but Dean’s head pops over the precipice immediately.

“Sam? You good?”

“Fantastic,” says Sam, loud enough that Dean can hear him properly. “Though it’s getting kind of boring down here.”

“We’re getting that rope secured, Sammy, hold on.” He turns back abruptly, and throws up his hands at someone Sam can’t see. “Well find a better tree, goddammit, you said you used to be a Boy Scout!”

Sam returns to his decidedly not-boring circumstances, which are unfolding on a grassy mezzanine overlooking a two-hundred foot drop into evergreen Oregonian woodlands. The surfboard-sized jut of rock had broken his fall – or more specifically his ankle’s fall – from the lip of the cliff, saving his ass from becoming a red splatter, but it also marooned him in mid-air. Dean had shot the witch animating the skeletal Fozzies shortly after his tumble, returning the latter to piles of useless bones and saving the terrorised hikers. His expression when he peeked over the ridge for the first time did not indicate success, however, until Sam made his survival evident. His brother had groaned in relief, so pale that Sam was worried he might tip right over the side to join him. Then they’d really be up shit creek.

Speaking of which –

He twitches the toes of his left foot experimentally, huffing in frustration when everything below his swollen ankle remains numb and immobile. Mottled bruises climb halfway up his shin, stormily ominous, and he knows he’s in for a world of pain when his boot stops doing the triage work on whatever had snapped when he landed. He forces himself to stay focused on conjuring up a nascent plan of action once he gets up and out of this situation, because the alternative is sheer panic, and that’s not an option when all 6’4’’ of him is struggling to stay afloat on the world’s worst life raft.

“Sam! Incoming.”

He looks up, then hurriedly down again as a rope spirals towards his face. It slaps against the wall of stone next to him and dangles, a thick knot tied near its end.

“I can come down there –,”

“No,” he replies, dialling up the volume again. “I already said, Dean, there’s not enough space here.”

Plus, his faith in the upper body strength of the traumatised civilians Dean has as backup is exactly null. He has visions of the pair of them plummeting to their deaths when one of their would-be spotters loses his or her nerve.

“Well, at least keep pressure off your bum leg, all right?”

“I’m not a moron, Dean –,”

“You’re the one that got KO’d by Winnie the Pooh, man, all I’m saying.”

Sam mumbles something decidedly uncomplimentary and self-deprecating about Dean’s parentage as he drags himself up, keeping his fingers glued to the wall. One of his nails bends too far and seeps as he scrabbles for purchase, his eyes locked on his one functioning foot. It’s difficult to hold his attention, what with the vertiginous descent awaiting him just beyond it. He remembers the last time he was presented with a similar sight, and shakes his head to dislodge the memory.

It’s definitely a bad time to be thinking about the Pit.

“Sam? How’s it going down there?”

He’s not so far gone that he can’t detect the worry saturating his brother’s voice, the familiar stream of banter vanishing when he clocks that it’s not doing its job as a bulwark against hysteria. Sam wants to notify him that that sort of tactic normally works better when he knows Dean’s within smacking distance anyway, but it’s nice to know he’s trying.

“I can do it,” he calls, because he doesn’t have a choice but to do it. He’s not going to let his body become bird food or a pancake. Dean will follow him down, then kill him.

He slowly unsticks one hand from the wall to grab the rope, and once he has a decent grip he takes its length in his other. He veers just a little near the overhang, and his good foot scrapes at grit as he curses in a sharp burst.

“Fuck! Sam? Are you –,”

“I’m good,” he says, strangled. “If you could pull me up now that’d be great. That’d be the best.”

“Hold on tight, I mean it. You really don’t want me following you over.”

Sam rolls his eyes, even as his stomach roils with nausea. No way that’s happening.

The rope pulls taut suddenly, and then he’s moving, ascending like an oversized Peter Pan in a middle-school play. His hamstrings roar as he keeps his legs clenched, and a dull throbbing starts up in his left foot, incited by his heart galloping towards tachycardia. His hands curl in a white-knuckled, permanent flex. His surroundings swim; he catches only brown rock and lavender sky and the forested matte painting that demands him like a small god, seeking sacrifice. He clings to the physical, the burn of the rope and the scratch of stone against his shoulder and knees, the burgeoning pain of his shattered ankle. To Dean, spouting repetitive encouragements like a volunteer football coach that actually cares about the sport.

He crests the edge of the cliff and doesn’t even realise it until there are hands on him, yanking him over, away from the hungry pit. Crag. Drop. Whatever it was, it’s gone.

He’s frisked for wounds, breath hot and sour on his hair. “You scared the ever-loving _shit_ out of me.”

“Ow. My _leg_ , Dean.”

“Damn it.” Dean tows him further still from the cliff, grimacing at Sam’s hissed protests when his ankle is jounced. “Sorry. I don’t want to have you roll off again by accident.”

“The first time I went over was an accident too, you know.”

“Well I should frigging hope so. Stop being dramatic and sit still.”

Sam slumps against a tree bole as Dean departs to fetch their bags, his mood slipping as the adrenaline leaks out of him. He’s so busy becoming grumpy that he doesn’t notice his audience, a family of six that is gathered together and spectating with fascination, until a young man steps up. He’s holding out a bottle of water like it’s a steak he’s hoping will placate a stalking tiger, and Sam fails to hide his surprise. He’d almost forgotten about the unwitting victims of the witch, unfortunate enough to stumble upon a black mass while scouting for a picnic locale. 

“Are you guys okay?”

The young man, who can’t be much older than sixteen, grins awkwardly. “You’re the one that almost died saving us. Here.” He shakes the plastic bottle, and Sam takes it with a nod of thanks. “Are you badly injured?”

“He’s fine,” Dean proclaims, throwing a duffle down beside Sam. It lands with a puff of dust, just adjacent to his aching ankle, and he scowls.

“Are you _trying_ to cripple me?”

“My bad.” Dean shoves the bag aside and kneels in its place, propping Sam’s foot on his lap. “Now let’s see if I need to whittle a peg leg.”

“You’re such a – _fuck_ –,”

He’s stifled when Dean unlaces his boot and a jolt of pain lances through his ankle, an experience that isn’t exactly improved by the young man’s gasp of horror and the distant mutters of his reproving parents.

“Dude, is that bone?” the kid asks, and Sam just assumes Dean glares him into silence, because his vision is succumbing to the kind of pillowing blankness that accompanies naps after significant blood loss. He grinds his teeth and buries his nails into his forearm, firmly refusing to pass out.

“It’s definitely fractured, if not broken,” says Dean nervously, and pats his thigh. “But there’s only swelling, so I’m staying positive. Sam? You home?”

“Yeah,” he musters, chilled by sweat. He shakes his head and brings Dean’s wan face into view, the kid dipping in opposite. “What’s – what’s your name?”

“Well that’s not a good sign –,”

“Not you,” Sam says tonelessly, flailing an arm in the kid’s general direction. He seems to cop to Sam’s intention fairly quickly.

“Oh! I’m Derek Mackenzie. That’s my mom and dad and Tilda and Barry and Jamie and they –,”

“Got it,” says Sam wearily. “Is anyone hurt?”

“Nope,” says Derek, popping the ‘p’. “They’re fine, just freaked out. I mean, not that I wasn’t. Fuckin’ bears with no eyes – you said zombie bears, dude, and I totally agree, it was fu-huh-hucked, like I’ve never seen anything like that and I play Dark Souls and Witcher 3, you’d think I’d be prepared but instead I was like two seconds away from a code brown –,”

“Great,” he interjects, and turns back to Dean. “Guess we were wrong about the chupacabra.”

“I knew it was some witch crap,” counters Dean, zipping open their duffle and lifting out a first-aid kit. “Any time the MO gets sketchy I know it’s humans dicking around. Our ghosty friends stick to the rules of the game, at least.”

“Witches?” says Derek excitedly. “Ghosts? That wasn’t some – rabies thing?”

“We’re park rangers, it’s part of our lingo,” says Dean, but lackadaisically, ignoring the practically vibrating teen until Sam hits his elbow. “What?” He looks up. “Oh. Um. Listen, kid, this conversation really needs to happen later –,”

“No, I get it,” he says, leaping up. “Want me to collect evidence, or – maybe if you give me a gun I can protect –,”

“How about you stop anyone else going timber over the edge, there,” says Dean, unspooling gauze. “’Cause really, that’s proved the biggest hazard today.”

Derek salutes and scrambles back to his family, who instantly start quizzing him, their gazes furtive when they flick to Sam’s prone form and Dean’s makeshift doctoring.

“Yikes,” says Dean, then starts tapping Sam’s forehead as he nods in agreement.

“Agh. What?”

“Lie down. You need to get this elevated.”

Sam obliges, but grudgingly, uncomfortable with the notion of leaving himself exposed twice in one encounter. All he needs now is for a troupe of undead squirrels to finish him off.

“Stop moping.”

“I’m not,” he grouses, supine and staring up at the tree canopy dappling him with fading sunlight. “My leg hurts.”

“Yeah, and you’re moping about it.”

Sam wants to kick him, he really does, but he settles for shooting him a look that could have withered a whole garden. “I’m going to be laid up and useless for weeks after this. With everything going on –,”

“We’ll figure it out,” says Dean, sliding off Sam’s boot completely, then his sock, and beginning the process of binding his ankle. Sam feels woozy at the amount of purple that has joined the pulsating red and blue of his skin. He’s like a one-man rave strobe.

“You still with me?”

“Yup,” he says tightly, resting his forearm over his eyes, blocking out the too-bright light. “You nearly done?”

The throbbing is worse now, sending out ripples of pain that make him think he may have cracked his patella as well. Such would be in line with his luck. Why wouldn’t he be compelled to amputate his leg the same year he has to get rid of God? There was a time he had to stop darkness from consuming the universe while simultaneously keeping his brother from killing his way across the continent, and those few months he had hallucinations of Satan while primordial beasts infiltrated corporate America. This is par for the course.

Dean is barking at him.

“Wha?”

“Jeez. I said take these.” He’s proffering three white pills by Sam’s cheek, teasing relief. “The kid left water for you, right there.”

“That’s not Vicodin.”

“Good shit’s in the car.” Dean picks up his hand and tips the pills into his palm. “Ibuprofen will tide you over till we hike back there, okay?”

Sam doesn’t respond, but swallows the pills dry, flinching when Dean resumes the slow mummification of his ankle. It’s heavier now, a thick weight that he can see far away, Dean bent intently over it as he ties off a strip and starts again with another one. He’s being parcelled like a Christmas present; Chuck’s chipped gift, already tossed about by the FedEx of fate.

He moans. He’s getting maudlin before five p.m., which Dean forbade in their household when Jack started copying Dean’s alcoholic breakfasts. It’s helpful for daily morale, Sam knows, right up until reality returns with a snap.

“All done,” Dean announces, sounding a little strained. He pokes Sam until he opens his eyes again and appraises his handiwork.

“I can’t walk on this.”

“Did you knock your head on the way down?” Dean gripes, clearing up his materials without shifting his knee or Sam’s foot, perched precariously on top of it. He stuffs the leftover boot in the bag, as well as his bandolier of extra ammo. “I know that.”

“Get the Mackenzies back to their minivan, then,” says Sam, sighing. He can wiggle his toes a bit now, which is something. “I’m guessing it’s a minivan. I’ll wait here, and when you –,”

“I’m not leaving you here,” says Dean incredulously. “Real live bears like chewing on idiots lost in the woods just as well as zombie ones, and we don’t even know if that psycho was alone. She might have friends.”

“Exactly. It took us hours to get out here, Dean. We can’t keep those kids in here past dark.”

“Then we’ll have to improvise.” Dean whistles, summoning Derek like a dog he knows is expecting a walk. He seems unperturbed when the father comes too, dourly observing the scene.

“Can you guys grab these bags? We have to hike out of here before something else gets our scent.”

This garners Mr Mackenzie’s full attention. “There’s more of those – those monsters out there?”

Dean gently lowers Sam’s foot to the ground, and helps him sit up. “Possibly. I know you have backpacks, but you can trade these off between you as we go.” He keeps the rifles on his person, Sam notes, amused. Derek does seem the type to riddle a particularly suspicious shadow with bullets before investigating first, so it’s probably for the best.

“And – and him?”

The clearing gets a little too quiet. Dean is staring at Mr Mackenzie, and Mr Mackenzie is recoiling from Sam, retreating into his son.

“My brother, who was injured saving your hide, will be coming with us.” Dean tosses him one of the duffles like a basketball, and the unexpected heft of it makes Mr Mackenzie sag. “Be glad he’s not worse, my man, because all of us would be fucked then.”

“Dean,” Sam chides, but Mr Mackenzie has already passed his bag to Derek and picked up the other without further comment. He turns and ushers his son back towards their family, ignoring the teenager’s complaints.

“Asshole,” Dean grumbles, handing Sam the rifles, Dean’s ArmaLite pristine while the barrel of Sam’s has been punctured by animal claws. Figures.

“He’s just scared for his family,” Sam insists as Dean rummages through his pockets, and he’s certain the pair of them are stridently avoiding recalling werewolves in a basement, guns and choking and that unspeakable gap afterwards. Sam’s breath hitches anyway. 

“Yeah, and it sucks,” he says, producing the rifles’ shoulder straps and pushing Sam forward. “Believe me, I know. Arms up.”

“What the fuck are you doing?”

“Loading you up,” he says, clipping the straps to the rifles and looping them crosswise over Sam, so he’s got the pair of them on his back. He’s bristling with weaponry like a cowboy in the most pathetic western possible.

“Great. Thanks. You want to get me a crutch or something? Since I left my jetpack in the bunker?”

“Don’t worry about that. I’m like that guy on TV who drinks his own piss. Survival instincts, you know?”

Sam wonders if Dean is suffering from an undiagnosed concussion. Maybe the witch dinged him while he was out of commission on a ledge above a crunchy death. “Come again?”

Dean grasps Sam’s hand and pulls him up, his arm sliding around his waist when he wobbles. “Let’s get the Bradys first. Hang on.”

They limp as a three-legged creature over to the Mackenzie family, who are coming apart Pangaea-style into an archipelago; the kids drift and occasionally exchange jibes while their parents argue, their frowns deepening as the discussion becomes more heated. When they cotton to Sam and Dean’s arrival, however, they swivel as a united front. Mrs Mackenzie snags her youngest daughter by her scruff and tries to envelop her, to whinges, and a quelling “ _quiet_ , Jamie.”

“We’re going to get moving,” says Dean, flat and factual. “It should take us maybe four hours to find the trail, and then it’s plain sailing back to the parking lot.”

“It’ll be almost night by then,” Mrs Mackenzie pipes up, quivering. “We can’t afford… delays.”

Sam’s neck is burning, but he’s rescued by Dean’s overly bright, blistering tone. “Correct! So there’ll be no pee breaks, young ‘uns, and you’d better hope Mommy here has kept up her prancercises –,”

“What Dean means to say,” Sam cuts in, exasperated, and all too aware of the need for cooperation, “is that I’m going to do my best to keep up. Our goal is to get you guys out safe.”

“You could give me a gun,” says Mr Mackenzie, in a truly uncanny impression of his son. Derek scoffs, clearly offended by the theft of his idea.

“Nobody’s going to be blowing holes in the first leaf that shakes wrong,” Dean retorts. “We’re escorting you as a precaution, and honestly, we’re the only ones trained to fight these things.”

Mr Mackenzie wrings his hands. “Which were what, by the way? Those – those animals.”

“Feral bears,” says Sam, and doesn’t feel bad for the half-truth, even when Derek’s shoulders droop in disappointment.

“Bullshit,” says the older Mackenzie girl, who’s maybe thirteen, and looking somehow bored on a cliff after an altercation with the undead. You can’t please everybody, Sam reflects grimly. Her younger brother whispers something in her ear and she purses her lips, then tugs on Sam’s sleeve.

“Uh. Yeah?”

“Barry wants to know if you’ll have to cut off your leg. It’s a dumb question, to be honest, because it’s clear that you will.”

“I agree, the longer we stay here,” says Dean dryly. “You all okay to walk for a bit?”

“ _We’ll_ be fine,” replies Mr Mackenzie, as Derek thumps his sister on the arm. “We got all the way down here.”

“Excellent,” says Dean. Derek is pinched hard in the ribs, yelping as Mrs Mackenzie attempts to separate her internecine brood. “Lead the way, Mountain Man. Shout if you see anything.”

“What about you?”

“We’ll be on your tail,” says Dean, and unmoors himself from Sam’s side. He oscillates for a moment as Dean situates himself in front of him and crouches slightly. “Hop on, Sammy.”

The kids titter, and Mrs Mackenzie’s expression warps into something unreadable. Mr Mackenzie gawks openly at them.

Sam thinks the ground is looking mighty welcoming. He steadies himself by grabbing the hem of Dean’s jacket, his annoyance meter maxed out yet somehow still functioning. “Quit screwing around.”

“I’m not,” Dean hurls at him, irritable. “We have to get out of here together, and I sure as shit can’t do a bridal carry for nine miles. This is a free ride, all expenses paid, for little brothers only. Expires in five seconds, at which point I will leave you here as a fond memory.”

“I’m too heavy.”

“Not after eating prissy salads for the past eight years, Samantha.”

Sam kneads his forehead. The teenaged girl, presumably Tilda, has a phone with no service but plainly a perfectly working camera, going by the way she’s aiming it at them, and the youngest kid is clapping her hands in anticipation. “My turn next!” she shrieks.

“I did specify the requirements,” Dean informs her, like a rollercoaster attendant, then slaps Sam’s good leg. “Daylight’s wasting, soldier!”

Invoking the marine stylings of their deceased father is a low blow, but Sam isn’t blind to Dean’s waning patience. And it really is getting dimmer, the sun crawling into the forest that nearly claimed his life. He’s sure, in some realm, Chuck plotted this crap, too.

Sam sighs, holding his busted ankle above the ground, and clumsily clambers onto Dean’s back. He clings uncertainly, like an arthritic baby monkey, until Dean hoists him up by his thighs into a more secure position. Tilda’s camera shutters several times, until Derek shoves her.

“I’m at your six,” Dean says to Mr Mackenzie, who’s still dawdling, utterly flummoxed by the sight of Dean – or anyone, really – toting a guy Sam’s size like they weigh nothing more than a sack of potatoes. After a beat he gathers his wife and children behind him and starts off, Derek at the rear of his line of ducklings. Their new superfan keeps glancing back with an impressed grin, giving Sam a thumbs-up that he can’t reciprocate without losing his hold around Dean’s neck.

“Just tell me when you want a break,” Sam says, maintaining surveillance on his ankle as they plunge into the brush, winding between trees and creepers. One knock into a low-hanging bough and it’s lights out for him.

He suddenly feels Dean’s laugh, buried, like a tectonic rumble. “I can handle this. You know, I used to carry you back from that after-school crèche in Chicago when you were little. Every single day. You’d get so tired you’d just sit in the middle of the sidewalk.”

Sam snorts, remembering long days squatting in a crappy apartment, subsisting solely on tinned alphabet soup and crackers. Some of his first memories are of that place, the shadow of his dad on his periphery while Dean is all in technicolour, reading him books aloud and teaching him how to play soccer with balled up socks. It certainly wasn’t the shabbiest place they’d ever had to call a temporary home, but it was up there, by Dean’s recounting. Strange that he can’t frame it in the same way.

“So you were a pack mule then, and now…” says Sam, knowing that he’s angling to be dumped into a bush. “Once an ass, always an ass, I suppose.”

“That’s the thanks I get,” Dean laments, to no-one in particular. “For years I slave after him, and for what?”

“The absolute pleasure of my company.”

“My company right now is a dopey Chewbacca and six dead weights. No offence,” he calls to Derek, who shrugs in tacit accord. “I’m thinking it might not be worth it.”

“Yeah, yeah, keep talking, old man,” says Sam, giddy for the first time in too long. Dean is a comforting shape and warm from exertion, and he feels slightly drunk on the security of him. “I’m Luke, though. You can be Yoda.”

“You're on _my _back, genius. I’m Han, anyway. I get the babes and I have a giant sidekick.”__

Sam blows a raspberry. “Elderly Han, maybe.”

Dean’s splutters of indignation and increasingly feeble counter-arguments take them nearly three miles, Derek slowing to offer his two cents whenever they start to straggle. Around the point that Dean stops sniping to focus on breathing, Sam calls a halt to their expedition and makes them take fifteen. Ideally it would be twenty, but Mrs Mackenzie shoots daggers at the pair of them until they get moving again, the evening settling into a gloom around them.

“Flashlights,” Sam suggests for peace of mind, and the Mackenzies take one each, Sam lighting Dean’s way with his own.

They’re close to the trail, with no witches having yet pounced from the encroaching darkness, when Dean stumbles without warning, lurching into a tree and just catching himself on a lattice of vines. Sam’s foot crashes into the trunk and he manages not to pass out after a cry of pain that makes Dean jolt.

“Shit, shit, Sam, are you –,”

“I’m fine,” he wheezes, seeing stars. “Motherfuck. Chuck wants me to feel the burn today, huh?”

Dean hefts him up again, drawing Sam’s hands back into a clasp over his breastbone. “I think this is just our regular crappiness. Our job. Warts and all.”

He squeezes the calf of Sam’s good leg and ploughs through the dusky woodland after the Mackenzies, who are just silhouettes, and gaining ground on them. Sam holds on a bit tighter, Dean’s musculature moving like water under his grip.

“Could be worse, I suppose. I could have fallen off that cliff.”

“There you go.”

Branches and foliage whip past, Dean routinely pushing them aside so they don’t catch in Sam’s hair or poke out an eye. He feels affection surge for his brother, inexplicable and arresting in its quantity.

“Thanks for not ditching me back there,” he says softly, maybe hoping Dean won’t hear him over the rustling of their progress through the wood. “Even though you should have.”

“That was never gonna happen,” Dean replies, sounding almost amused. Sam can tell by the thunder in his chest, so akin to the growl of the Impala (or, to be fair, anyone shouldering 190 lbs of brother). “You must have gotten that by now, Sam. Jeez. You’re meant to be the smart one.”

“Hey. I have my off periods.”

“News flash to nobody, Sam Winchester gets periods.”

“Dick.”

“That’s me.”

He smiles, and bops the back of Dean’s skull with his forehead.

“Ow.”

“Yeah. Ow, actually.” He blinks. “That was supposed to be a thank you.”

“From a rhino, maybe.”

“Shut up. And you said I wasn’t heavy!”

Dean bounces, making him clutch on for dear life, and snickers. “Yeah, you’re right, this is like carrying a bunch of smelly laundry.” He continues cracking himself up until Sam covers his eyes, and then they start stumbling off into the wilderness. Derek wrangles them back, but Sam still makes Dean call ‘uncle’ on principle. Besides, making Mrs Mackenzie sneer at their antics really is hilarious once they know they aren’t all about to be hunted down by zombie bears.

Revenant familiars, Sam amends, then just surrenders to the colloquialism. It could be worse. It could be ‘Jefferson Starships’.

Miles and minutes fly past, and before long they have traipsed their way back onto the hikers’ trail, aware of the crossed finish line by Mr Mackenzie’s moan of relief and the cheers from the children. They’re steeped in darkness and the chittering of unseen animals, but there’s gravel under their feet – most of their feet, at least – and streetlamps, visible between the coppiced trees.

Dean sets Sam down with a lengthy exhale, once again attaching himself to his side and slinging an arm around his waist. They watch as the Mackenzies hurtle towards civilisation, as rumbustious as though they’d been living off the land for months, instead of half a day. Derek retrieves a duffle bag from his father, and canters back to them during this Black Friday-esque rush with his own burden, looking over his shoulder guiltily. He sidles up to them to return the bags, and once they’ve achieved some equilibrium he sticks his hand out, tremulous.

“Thank you. My family will feel bad about this later, but you’ll probably be gone by then, so – thank you.”

Sam shakes his hand, smiling. “No problem.”

“You almost fell off a cliff and your ankle is a bag of broken ceramic,” Dean reminds him, keening into white noise when Sam plants his elbow in his diaphragm.

“Sorry for freaking out earlier, too. I guess they were weird bears, right?” Derek chuckles, but it’s hollow, and Sam can see this kid second-guessing his own perception for the rest of his life. Witnessing a resurrection via demonic benediction can change a person. Even the trajectory of their future.

“Derek,” he says, and some of his wariness must have crept into his tone, because Derek is suddenly rapt.

“Derek, those bears were zombies.”

“Told ya,” Dean coughs.

“They were undead, raised by witches.” Derek’s jaw goes slack, his mouth curving around the presage of a million questions, and Sam fends them off by rattling off the rest of the well-worn hunters’ introduction spiel. “There’s magic out there, and monsters, and some of them are powerful enough to be a danger to you. Most people can’t deal with this knowledge, but I’m telling you because you can. And now you know. You can protect your family.”

Derek nods, so serious that Sam would laugh if he wasn’t so busy fighting off necrosis. He’s a good kid, he thinks, as Derek shakes Dean’s free hand in turn. No harm having more people out there prepped for the end times, either. There would come a day when Chuck, a witch, a monster or a cliff beat the Winchesters at their own game, and their just desserts would go down a lot sweeter knowing their world was going to go on spinning.

It’s also nice to lighten the load. To split the crappiness into more than just halves.

“Thank you, again,” says Derek, flushing. Beyond the treeline, a woman calls his name, and he jumps, tempering his frustration at his curtailed interview.

“Stay out of trouble, Derek,” says Sam, and that seems to be enough for Dean, who starts pulling him in the opposite direction, where they’d stashed the car behind a bottle bank. “And stay safe!”

“You too!” exclaims Derek, waving. “Wait – Mom, stop – can I text you? Guys?”

“I don’t want him tracking us down every time he sees a weirdly big dog,” Sam explains, when Dean raises an eyebrow at his silence. They’re limping slowly now, their remaining flashlight soaking the trail in pale gold. It’s almost peaceful.

“Just don’t start evangelising too much,” Dean warns. “The bunker isn’t the X-Mansion, and we have enough on our plate.”

“I know,” says Sam, as they slip between the trees, heading for the outskirts of the parking lot. The Impala waits like a breaching orca, sleek under the ascending moon. “Is it so bad to give more people the ability to protect themselves? It would sure make out job easier.”

“Not mine,” grunts Dean, sitting Sam on the hood and easing the rifles off his back. Once he has them in the trunk with their bags he swings around to pop the passenger door open, arm crooked for support. “In you get. We can make that clinic across town in ten minutes.”

Sam obliges him, mostly because the paltry painkillers had worn off an hour earlier, and he’s all out of bravado. When he finally arranges all his limbs inside the car, an orange pill bottle gets shaken like a maraca next to his ear. The Vicodin.

“We’ll get it X-rayed and wrapped up even better too, don’t worry.” Dean is grinning, bled of tension, like getting Sam to the car had removed the last traces of a toxin. It makes Sam similarly loosen up, melting back into the faded pleather.

“I’ll be two for two today, then. Living and keeping my foot means good luck, right?”

Dean slaps him on the chest. “That’s the optimistic Sammy I know and love.”

Sam tries not to smile. But not too hard.

**Author's Note:**

> * Inspired by how funny it looks when Jared jumps on Jensen? Maybe


End file.
